'Reform of the Wuxu year') was a failed 103-day national, cultural, political, and educational reform movement that occurred from 11 June to 22 September 1898 during the late Qing dynasty.
[1] Tan Sitong asked Yuan Shikai to kill Ronglu, take control of the garrison at Tientsin, and then march on Beijing and arrest Cixi.
Reforms such as the abolishing of the old writing style was put back into mandate, the removal of offices and agencies were reinstituted, and the establishment of certain newspapers, civil societies and schools were all suspended.
[12] The two principal leaders, Kang Youwei and his student Liang Qichao, fled to Japan to seek refuge where they founded Baohuang Hui (Protect the Emperor Society) and worked, unsuccessfully, for a constitutional monarchy in China.
Dong Fuxiang and the Muslim Gansu Army stationed in Beijing during the Hundred Days' Reform later participated in the Boxer Rebellion and became known as the Kansu Braves.
The late Qing reforms attempted in the years following the Hundred Days included the abolition of the Imperial examination in 1905, educational and military modernization patterned after the model of Japan, and experiments in constitutional and parliamentary government.
The highly xenophobic iron hats faction dominated the Grand Council and were seeking ways to expel all Western influence from China.
Numerous rumors regarding potential repercussions, many of them false, had made their way to the Grand Council; this was one of the factors in their decision to stage a coup against the Emperor.
According to Professor Lei Chia-sheng (雷家聖),[15] Japanese former prime minister Itō Hirobumi (伊藤博文) arrived in China on September 11, 1898, about the same time that Kang Youwei invited British missionary Timothy Richard to Beijing.
Kang nonetheless asked fellow reformers Yang Shenxiu (楊深秀) and Song Bolu (宋伯魯) to report this plan to the Guangxu Emperor.
[18] In another memorial to the Emperor written the next day, Song advocated the formation of a federation and the sharing of the diplomatic, fiscal, and military powers of the four countries under a hundred-man committee.
On October 13, following the coup, British ambassador Claude MacDonald reported to his government that Chinese reforms had been "much injured" by Kang and his friends' actions.